262 pliny's natural history. [Book XX. 



mixed in yinegar with one third part of bread, it is applied 

 as a liniment for head-ache. The juice of it, injected into 

 the nostrils, with the head thrown back, arrests bleeding at 

 the nose, and the root has a similar effect. This last is em- 

 ployed also, with myrtle-seed, in warm raisin wine, as a gargle 

 for the cure of quinsy. 



CHAP. 57- — cxDwriN : forty-eight remedies, wild cummin : 



TWENTY- SIX REMEDIES. 



Wild cummin is a remarkably slender plant, consisting of 

 four or five leaves indented like a saw ; like the cultivated ^^ 

 kind, it is much employed in medicine, among the stomachic 

 remedies more particularly. Bruised and taken with bread, 

 or else drunk in wine and water, it dispels phlegm and flatu- 

 lency, as well as gripings of the bowels and pains in the intes- 

 tines. Both varieties have the effect, however, of producing 

 paleness ^^ in those who drink these mixtures ; at all events, it 

 is generally stated that the disciples of Porcius Latro,^^ so cele- 

 brated among the professors of eloquence, used to employ this 

 drink for the purpose of imitating the paleness which had been 

 contracted by their master, through the intensity of his studies : 

 and that Julius Yindex,®^ in more recent times, that assertor 

 of our liberties against j^ero, adopted this method of playing 

 upon ^^ those who were looking out for a place in his will. 

 Applied in the form of lozenges, or fresh with vinegar, cummin 

 has the effect of arresting bleeding at the nose, and used by 



^ Cummin is the Curainum cyminum of Linnaeus. The seed only is 

 used, and that but rarely, for medicinal purposes, being a strong excitant 

 and a carminative. In Germany, and Turkey, and other parts of the East, 

 cummin-seed is esteemed as a condiment. 



'•'^ Horace, B. i. Epist. 19, says the same; but in reality cummin pro- 

 duces no such effect. 



3- M. Porcius Latro, a celebrated rhetorician of the reign of Augustus, 

 a Spaniard by birth, and a friend and contemporary of the elder Seneca. 

 His school was one of the most frequented at Rome, and he numbered 

 among his scholars the poet Ovid. He died B.C. 4. 



^^ The son of a Roman senator, but descended from a noble family in 

 Aquitanian Gaul. When propraetor of Gallia Celtica, he headed a revolt 

 against Nero ; but being opposed by Virginius Rufus, he slew himself at 

 the town of Vesontio, now Besan^on. 



s^ " Captationi" is suggested by Sillig as a preferable reading to 

 " captatione," which last would imply that it was Yinde.x himself who 

 sought a place by this artifice, in the wills of others. 



